


Color: Orange

by sammichgirl



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (implied) - Freeform, 6x01 Exile on Main Street, Gen, Soulless!Sam, Wincest - Freeform, but he's foundering, color inspo fic, domestic!Dean, if you squint just right - not explicit, pre season 6, takes place right before
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-13
Updated: 2017-07-13
Packaged: 2018-12-01 16:51:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11490603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sammichgirl/pseuds/sammichgirl
Summary: Dean planting flowers for Lisa, thinking about Sam, it's too very domestic and he’s foundering.





	Color: Orange

Sun warmed soil falls through his fingers as he works in the flower bed.  Weeding, tilling, transplanting, mulching.  So damn domestic and it feels all kinds of wrong. 

He should be digging, no doubt.  Just not in Cicero, Indiana.  Of course, he’d never find what he was looking for even if he did dig where his heart calls.  Still, at least that space in Stull Cemetery would be cleared, prettier in memory of the one it keeps deep down underneath, locked inside a cage.  Dean wonders if anything he would plant could even grow in that cursed earth.  Sam deserves flowers worthy of him: sturdy, strong sunflowers, tall as his little brother but not half as beautiful.  Flowers for adoration, loyalty and longevity.  Flowers that turn to follow the sun – Dean never did figure out who was the sun and moon between him and his brother.  They just wandered in perpetual orbit around each other.

Instead, he’s got several bushy containers of Profusion Orange zinnias.  They’ve just started blooming, and they need to get into the soil quickly to take root since they’re outgrowing their containers.  Or so he’d been advised at the local nursery when he’d picked them up along with some other supplies on the list.  Dean can’t stand them.  They’re too damn bright and cheerful.  Lisa thought they’d be an appropriate flower for the front yard beds when she’d brought up the idea of Dean doing some gardening.  Horticultural therapy, she’d said, something about helping his PTSD.  He’d looked it up online to understand what that meant and further discovered that zinnias stood for thoughts of absent friends, endurance, goodness and lasting affection.  Well.  If he’s gonna go all suburban like and plant flowers at least they mean something he can relate to.  Still, Dean resents their happy little flower faces and has taken his frustration out on the neatly edged bed with his trowel in multiple stabbing motions.  When he realizes he likely looks like a crazed psycho killer, he stops to pull himself together.

He’s spent the better part of the morning out here, waving as he’s supposed to at neighbors as they pass by.  He’d made a promise, he’s been trying, but his heart hasn’t been in it.  Sure, he cares about Lisa and Ben.  But being a standard working Joe, with a job and family, attending local barbecues and living an apple pie life?  That was always really just a pipedream for any hunter.  Reality crashed down hard when he came here.  It’s been a living nightmare.  His heart is beyond his reach and he feels like a robot going through the motions.  He’s not sure how much longer he can keep this up.  The itch under his skin is growing, a yearning to be doing what he knows, to be who he is.

He works quietly through the afternoon, giving occasional swipes to his forehead to clean off the sweat while leaving small dirt smudges behind as he makes neat little rows of bushy orange zinnias.  Lisa smiles softly at him through the living room window when he looks up.  He hears Ben tear through the backdoor out into the yard before he sees the small group of boys round the corner of the house to head to the ice cream truck coming down the street.

That prickling feeling that someone is watching him sets in.  He looks around, alert for anything unusual.  This place is practically Main Street USA.  Still, he’s cautious.  Knowing what could find him, what he could bring back here. 

The next day after work is when it all goes to shit.  His heart feels like it just started beating again after a year of flat lining.  And four days later, the orange zinnia bushes were trampled from the fallout.  Stupid happy blossoms.  Joy, love, adventure – they can’t be found in a flower.  But they can be found in his brother.


End file.
